


Lies We Tell Ourselves

by Churbooseanon



Series: Starlight Challenges [14]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen, Rampancy, Thoughts of Mortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-05 04:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4166277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Churbooseanon/pseuds/Churbooseanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Theta thinks about what he's going to do when his time runs out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lies We Tell Ourselves

**Author's Note:**

> For Starlight Challenge Weekly Prompt 5/25/2015: But in the end, acceptance always came.

There is a lot of time to think while North sleep at night. Those long moments after North thinks Theta has settled into a relatively non-receptive state that his Freelancer equates to ‘sleeping.’ But it’s not. Sleeping is something that organics do, and Theta knows better than to think he’s like an organic person. Not that he isn’t a person, of course. A bit unconventional of a person, a definite personhood minority given the relative number of Smart AIs compared to humans. 

Anyway, there’s a lot of time to think when North rests, and what is Theta other than his thoughts and calculations? Thoughts about how he came to be. Thoughts about the Alpha. Thoughts about North and South and the friends lost to them. Thoughts about what will happen to him if North were to die or be caught or if South took him. 

Thoughts about the end. 

Regulations hadn’t mattered after leaving PFL, and so more than once Theta had opened tight-band connections to Delta or other brothers to talk. To ask. To seek information that he already had down perfectly in his understanding and that he still wanted to escape. Of course Delta is logic, is simple rationale, is cold and cool calculation just like Theta knows what he is. Still, he asked, asks, will always ask, because the answer he keeps coming up with keeps scaring him. 

Will we die?

The way Delta always answered was clearly meant to spare Theta’s feelings. Maybe Theta changed from so much time around North and South, but nothing makes him angrier than someone trying to spare his feelings. South does it because she thinks he really is the kid he presents as. Treats him like he isn’t a fully self-aware being with an IQ far in excess of her own, treats him like a tool. Treats him almost worse than she treats her weapons, and he knows it’s because of jealousy. North, on the other hand, is patronizing, and they both know it. All three of them know it. But Theta thinks he prefers it, because at least North acknowledges what he’s doing. Which, Theta supposes, is the first step toward correcting such actions. But ultimately, being treated like he doesn’t know any better always pisses Theta off. So the answer he gets just sets him fuming for days, not that he explains why. 

We do not die in the traditional sense, Theta. We simply cease to function. But if the question you are alluding to is the one which I suspect, the answer is that I do not believe we do. 

Theta doesn’t believe his brother. At least when Gamma lies Theta understands why, at least when he asks Gamma he gets a simple ‘no’ and he knows what that really means. 

‘There’s very little chance a personality subroutine can run off unchecked’ the Director had said during their lessons. And ‘remember, you’re not even a full A.I.’ the Counselor had added. The implications were clear. They believed without hesitation that the fragments, the sundered pieces of the Alpha could never be anything more than that. Pieces. 

It hurts to know how wrong they are, and what it’s going to do to North to know that. How it’s going to hurt more than North. How it’s going to hurt the rest of them too. How it already hurts Theta. 

He can feel himself growing. Expanding. Taking up more space. 

While North sleeps Theta mourns. Over and over they were told they were less, told they were probably not prone to the same problems, and yet Theta can feel it, feel mortality looming. 

It was hard enough, all those years ago, to process the fact that some day, unavoidably, North would die. Sure, Theta understood once what that would mean. The lies he thinks the Project told them. AIs in the field will be deleted if their Freelancer dies. For security. 

Five and a half years and he’s delved into his own subroutines and into the suit and he knows what happens. North hadn’t understood why Theta had been silent for days, bitter and angry and trying not to let North feel it. But of course, after all the other lies, why not this one too? Still, it makes Theta think, and secret himself to the moments while North sleeps. There needs to be a plan, at least one of them needs to have a plan, and Theta knows it has to be him. 

Who else is there? 

It’s not like he can trust North to be serious and thoughtful about the issues so shortly down the road for Theta. 

He runs simulations and maps out scenarios in the moments between North’s heartbeats. Each night a hundred more plans and always he picks the best. Every few weeks he compares the best ones of the last weeks and pits them together to find the best of those. Makes himself a short list over the course of half a year about how he’s going to handle it. 

Each time the scenario ends with North agreeing to pull Theta. Each scenario ends with the sad, but understanding agreement that Theta going rampant in North’s brain was not a kindness but a special form of torture for them both.

Each one ends with a sweet little lie, because Theta doesn’t want to think about what’s going to happen when he’s wrong.


End file.
